Steles of the Sky (34 page)

In the moments it had taken Tsechen to accomplish those actions, Anil-la scrambled up the last few steps and poked out his head. His voice was slightly muffled as he called down, “The snow drifted against the baggage. The hatchway is mostly clear.”

With a grunt, he hauled himself up. Yangchen, allowing Tsechen to fasten the clasps on the robe at her shoulder and under her arm, resisted the urge to call caution after him. The nurse had put Namri to her breast despite the cold, and now pulled a blanket up to cover both of them.

A moment later, Anil poked his head back down, supporting himself with one hand on the lip of the hatchway, and called, “Dowager? Perhaps it would please you to … I mean, your grace should probably see this.”

Even with the warmth from the quilted robe—two layers of silk stitched around felted yak wool—it was hard for Yangchen to unwrap her arms from around herself and grasp the ladder. The snow burned the soles of her feet; she turned to call for shoes, but one of the ladies in waiting had anticipated her need. As she stepped into the silk slippers, she could not help but think how ridiculously inadequate to the purpose they were.

She climbed, pressing her toes hard against the wall behind the wet rungs, and at the top of the ladder Anil-la was there to help her continue up the snowy railing until she could step off to the roof deck on one side. The cold took her breath away, instantly stinging her lips and fingers. She withdrew her hands into her robe. Her breath whipped from her in long white banners, tattered and dissipated by the wind.

She put her back to the force of it, blinking to clear blinding tears. What she saw was not nearly so bad as she had anticipated. The sun was high, marking afternoon, and it blazed in a transparent, gloriously aquamarine sky. The wagon was indeed drifted under, snow having piled high against the windward side and arched like a breaking wave over the top of the rope-lashed baggage—but the snow on the other side was only halfway up, and in places where nothing sheltered it the ground was swept almost clean. The rear door would have to be shoveled clear. Around the caravan she could see that corralled animals had sensibly moved into the shelter of circling wagons. The road was not impassable, though traveling would be difficult.

The tents, however, and the other wagons, were a different matter. Especially those on the windward edge of the encampment. She could see mounds from here that must be buried tents.

Her pulse quickened again. She touched Anil’s arm. “People may be trapped in them.”

“We will lose some,” he said. “See? There are teams already digging out. We will need to organize them, and you must direct the soldiers, Dowager.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. He ducked his head, abashed that he had dared to command the empress. But that was enough of an apology, and she nodded—startled at herself. A mere month before, she might have demanded him punished for his insolence, wizard or no. She had less need to prove her power, now that she had some.

As she looked over his shoulder, movement against the horizon drew her attention. Tall dark shapes, like men in heavy coats, moving over the snow with ridiculous ease. “What’s that?”

He turned. His hand went out as if to steady himself, but missed the railing. He might have tumbled back through the hatchway if Yangchen had not forgotten her own imperial status enough to catch his elbow.

“Mayeh,” he said unevenly. “You know, I thought they were mythical.”

“Man-bears,” Yangchen answered. “I hope they’re friendly. There’s no way we’re getting this mess into a defensive position right now.”

*   *   *

The Mayeh were taller than a man, when Yangchen finally stood before them. They had broad shoulders and long arms bulging with knotted muscle like the red forest apes she had seen once in a menagerie in Song, imported all the way from the wild spice islands to the south. They stood upright, however, and the pelts that covered them as densely as the fur of a yak were a dark brown color that caught sparks of auburn in the sun. Their feet were enormous, great paddles edged around with massive mats of fur that let them walk over the snow without sinking—as if they wore snowshoes.

They did not speak Rasani. But they had approached with open hands, unthreatening, and Anil-la and the Dowager Empress had managed to clamber down the side of the wagon and run up to the guards at the edge of the encampment, shouting for them to hold their attack. And now, the big male who seemed to be the leader approached Yangchen and showed her his big hands, the mahogany creases across the orange palms, and gestured to the buried tents and snow-stuck wagons.

“That’s an offer of assistance if I’ve ever seen one,” said Anil.

“You’re so helpful,” Yangchen muttered. Her shoulders crawled with cold. When she glanced sideways at him, he was grinning, and she wondered if he was as giddy at their near escape from being buried alive as she was.

She frowned at the Mayeh, wondering how to indicate that she appreciated his assistance, when he opened his mouth and dabbed his fingertips on his tongue. Then he licked his lips, as if he had eaten something delicious.

She glanced about herself, at the windswept rocky plateau, at the soldiers struggling to excavate survivors. Three tents over, a stiff body wrapped in clothing and blankets was being pulled from a collapsed tent. By its size, it was a child or a small woman.
We need this. We need this help, and now.

Something delicious. Something the Mayeh would know about, but not have easy access to. As she turned away, she caught sight of one of her advisors, struggling toward her through drifts with the assistance of a staff and a staunch young soldier.

“Na-Baryan,” Yangchen said. “How good of you to bring me another man to dig. Colonel, if you will?” She gestured him toward the excavations, and he went, not even bothering to glance at na-Baryan or shake the old man’s hand off his elbow.

“Dowager.” Painfully, na-Baryan began to prostrate himself in the snow.

Yangchen gestured him upright impatiently. “Get me honey,” she said. “We must have some.”

“Dowager?”

“Honey!” she snapped. “All of it. Requisition it from anyone who has some. Even the wagon masters. I know they’ve been giving it to the livestock to help keep them strong.”

As na-Baryan staggered away again, Yangchen bit her lip in distress—and made herself stop when she thought of how it would chap and split. The honey would be a terrible sacrifice; the oxen and mules pulling these wagons in the cold needed the energy sweet feed would give them. More would die before they reached Rasa … but her people were dying now.

When the first runner arrived with the first stoneware crock of the red Rasan honey, harvested by brave honey-gatherers from the hives of giant highland bees, Yangchen took it from his hands herself. He
did
prostrate himself in the snow before she could stop him. She was in too much of a hurry to make much of it, and with her own hands brought the crock before the leader or interpreter or envoy of the Mayeh.

Her fingernails split further as she picked at the wax that held it shut. Anil intervened, cut the seal with his knife, and pried the stopper out. Then he gave the jar back to Yangchen and backed away.

She sniffed the honey and touched her finger to its coarse, orangey-red, granulated surface, then touched the finger to her tongue. It was good, shockingly sweet, so tempting her cold stomach knotted with the desire for more. But she extended the crock, held it out to the Mayeh, and gestured that he, too, should taste.

He regarded her, brow furrowing in concentration, and then gently extended one hand, a pointing finger. A moment later, and he had scratched up a bit of honey with a ragged nail.

Yangchen held her breath as he tasted it.

When he opened his eyes, his lip lifted off enormous fangs. She stood her ground, arm extended. Surely it shook from the weight of the honey crock. Surely her teeth rattled with cold.

Behind her, more runners were starting to arrive, bearing more crocks of honey. Yangchen wondered if they would all be in time to watch their empress torn limb from limb.

Gently, the Mayeh reached out and lifted the crock from her hands. He handed the crock to the equally impressive female on his left, who also tasted it with closed eyes before responding with a grimace identical to the male’s.

Only then did Yangchen realize that what they were offering her was a smile.

*   *   *

When all were unearthed, only some fifty of Yangchen’s people had died in the snow. It was too many, and yet it was far less than it might have been, without the luck of the wind and the even greater luck of the Mayeh happening along. As the dead were blessed and stacked in carts—for there could be no proper pyre to release their spirits here—Yangchen sat in her saddle, on Lord Shuffle’s back, and she watched. Because for the dowager to watch gave the loading of the dead a gravity and dignity that took a little back from the harsh reality of soldiers stacking them like split wood. She watched the relatives of the dead bring them out, where they had relatives. She watched the tears of children and of parents, and could not decide which were worse.

She had not wept for her own father so, when word came of his passing.

She twined the coarse white coat of Lord Shuffle’s shoulders around her mittens. The real reason she was on his back was for the comfort his warm, cud-chewing presence offered. They would not be breaking camp before nightfall. It was better to take the time to rest one more day, even though anxiety gnawed her at the thought. But they would cover more ground in the long run if they just waited until dawn and struck out then.

So for now, she watched the bodies being loaded, and she grieved them. And as she grieved them, she heard the mockery of her father’s voice with her inner ear:
You did not know them, and even if you had, they are peasants, soldiers. Livestock. You should be thinking of how to extend the alliance with the Mayeh, and parley it into military and trade advantage. Not these folk.

She had never had the courage to do so in reality. But now to her surprise she heard herself arguing with the voice in her head.
These people are my responsibility.

They are tools. Only your children matter. Only you children ever mattered to me.

As tools for your own advancement!

Then she sat stunned. Stunned by her own audacity, but only a little. Stunned more by the never-previously-examined truth in her own—silent, unspoken, but nevertheless clearly registered—words.

And the stabbing recognition of herself that followed:
As I have used Namri for mine.

She was the dowager. She rested her hands, relaxed and still, on the pommel of Lord Shuffle’s saddle, the reins folded over her fur-lined mittens. She buried the lower half of her face behind fur, hiding her expression. The Dowager Empress should not look sour or shocked at what amounted to a state funeral.

She kept her back straight, and her eyes front, for what seemed like a lifetime—until the loading of the bodies was done and Anil-la came to fetch her. He reined his dark brown yak cow up beside Lord Shuffle. The animals had become friendly, and Yangchen found her leg pressed to Anil’s as the two beasts leaned together. She did not protest.

“Come and eat, Dowager.”

She followed. The sun was gone, leaving a smear of light in the west and a sky just bright enough for them to find their way beneath. Grooms waited to take custody of Shuffle and Anil’s mount, but Yangchen made sure Shuffle had an extra handful of grain just from her before she gave him up. “I’m glad the spirit bear did not get you.”

She felt guilty as she said it—selfish—but not so guilty that what she said was not true.

The wind had died to teasing breezes that blew the white fur trimming her hood this way and that. Her fingertips were numb in her mittens. Tonight would be killing cold again—colder, with the sky so clear, and no clouds to hold the warmth down close to the soil.

For a moment, she closed her eyes and let herself pray that there would be no new bodies to stack in the morning. When she opened them, they were alongside her own wagon and Anil-la’s hand was on her sleeve. She startled and turned, nerves humming, expecting some new threat—

He pulled her into the shadow of the wagon, and before she could protest, he pressed his mouth to hers.

*   *   *

A stunned moment, the blood humming in her ears, and Yangchen kissed him back. Kissed him as she had only ever kissed her husbands, and—shocking herself—with far more passion and desire. He smelled so good—well, he smelled of unwashed clothes, and rancid butter used to grease his hands and face against the cold, but
beneath
that he smelled delicious, warm and sweet. She thought of almond pastries, butter-rich. She opened her mouth to his.

Their lips would chap. Her nose burned where his breath dampened it. She didn’t care.

She did care that there was nowhere here in which they could seek privacy. She had nowhere to bring him, and suddenly all she wanted was to be alone with him, someplace sheltered, where she could warm herself on his body. Oh, to be truly warm again. Warm, and alone with a man. This man.

This was what it was to kiss someone for a reason besides duty.

She took a breath. She put her hands against his chest and pushed, feeling the force it took to compress mittens, liners, his parka, the wizard’s coat and shirt beneath, until he finally registered it as a protest and stepped back—panting, cheeks bright. Eyes shining as he looked at her. “Dowager—”

“It cannot happen,” she said.

His regard never wavered. “Do you want it to?”

She remembered—barely—not to bite her lip. She nodded.

“You are the dowager,” he said. “I am a wizard. Who is to tell you that you cannot have me, if you wish? There need be no secrets here.”

The advisors—

But no. He was a wizard. He could get no heirs on her to challenge the emperor-in-waiting.

That flutter in her chest, that warmth—was it hope? It had been so long since she’d felt it, in its real and unadulterated form, that she barely recognized it. “I could take you as a consort.”